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Population aging and growth of health care expenditures

Soonim Huh 1 Soo-Jung Kim 2

1서울시립대학교
2서울대학교 보건대학원

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study aims to examine the impact of change in population structure, i.e., populationaging, on health care expenditures. Analysis was conducted with data onnumber of enrollees, visit days, expenditures of entire beneficiaries of the NationalHealth Insurance(NHI), 2003-2012. Examination of expenditure profile by age group reveals that health care resourcesare allocated more for older population over time, suggesting significant growth ofhealth care expenditures due to population aging. However, results from decompositionmethod, which measures the contribution of each component to increaseof health care expenditures, presents that population aging contributes about only20.9 percent and the increase is ascribed largely to other components rather thandemographic factor, in particular price factor. Analysis of cohort by 5-year agegroup demonstrates that price factor is significant determinant of health care expendituresacross age group. Findings from this study suggest that population agingis not the main component of growth of NHI expenditures 2003-2012 and pricefactors related to change of coverage and practice of provider should be consideredin this regard.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.